


Mother

by turduckenail



Category: Original Work
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Last Person Alive, Mermaids, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 02:58:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13650021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turduckenail/pseuds/turduckenail
Summary: It's lonely at the end of the world.





	Mother

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this last November to procrastinate writing my actual NaNoWriMo story. It's pretty rough, but I think it's pretty good considering I barfed this out in an hour completely unplanned. I haven't proofread this so if the pacing's weird or I change tense halfway through, that's why. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, and I'd be super thrilled if you left a comment telling me what you thought about this! :D
> 
> You can find me over on Tumblr @turduckenail

She is the very last.

The ocean ebbs to the beat of it's tides, it flows to the tune of it's currents. The sun, so very, very bright and so very, very harsh, filters thin and watery below the surface into the depths below. The sun that had, without an atmosphere to guard against it any longer, damned everything on the surface to burn.

Here though, far below the waves, where the water is kept cool by the icy dark of it's depths, where there is no bottom to be seen, no base to the mountains that rise from the deepest dark of the world, where all is still, and calm, and silent, it is safe.

She clings to the side of a precipice. The sunlight falls soft along the length of her body and dances across her scales, and the currents tug at her hair, causing it to sway to the tune of an unheard melody.

She is alone.

There is no siren song echoing, the beasts that sang them all long dead. There are no minnows biting at her fingers, their bones lie scattered, feeding the weeds that grow up from the rocks.

Below the dark stretches on forever. It calls to her, tells her to throw herself down to be consumed by it, to be lost to it's depths. Perhaps she will listen. There is nothing in the dark that she fears. Not anymore.

Perhaps there is something there, something quiet and sleeping, waiting for the world to stop burning, waiting for it to quiet, so that it may one day rise and peacefully live out the rest of it's days.

If there is such a beast, she hasn't seen it. She wishes it luck, if it is there. She hopes it is there. She hopes she will find it one day. She could use the company, and she is so tired of being alone.

She turns from her perch, to a craggy fissure in the stone. It is wider than it is tall, half hidden by the moss and seaweed. It's dark in here, completely hidden from the sun, but near the back, hidden in a bed of sand and smooth seastone, there is a soft glow.

It is soft, barely strong enough to light the ground around its sources, but it makes the seaglass shards caught in the sand glitter and shine a pale blue-green. A dozen spheres, like lanterns, are piled together in a dip in the ground. Inside them, past the light, there are the barest hints of shadows. A sign of something growing inside. She floats above them and counts.

One, two, three, more green than blue, their light strong and their shadows dark. Four, five, less green, with an almost violet taint to the blue. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, their shadows squirm under her gaze, all strong, all safe. Eleven, twelve. Smaller than their siblings, their light wavers and gutters, then flickers to life again. They are not strong, but they are fighters, like their mother. They will survive. She can feel it.

Stars, she hopes they survive.

She curls her body around them, the bars of light along her side glow bright, and the eggs glow brighter in response. The sand begins to warm with the heat from her body, and she curls herself tighter, to protect all she has left, to keep them warm and safe.

She is tired, and lonely, and she is the last. For the barest moment, she allows herself to hope that, someday, she will also be the first.


End file.
